My Interviews with Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#81

Post by coredog64 » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:20 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #69

perspectivep wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proof is in the pudding. My savings are growing at an astronomically higher rate than it was in the Midwest. I used to tell myself the same thing before I moved.

It really depends on the individual situation. The biggest cost variance is in housing. In the Midwest, you can get a 2,500 sq ft home for ~1.3k +/- $350. [0] Under normal leasing standards (no more than 1/3rd your income to rent), you can pay that if you have a job in the $50k-$60k range. And that's almost the standard -- big houses and big yards for everyone. In LA or SEA, you're looking at 2.5x-4x that, which is a…

> The other option is to live way out in the burbs, where prices are probably closer to 1.5x-2.5x, and spend 2.5 hours commuting every work day.

I think I've mentioned this before, but when I interviewed at Amazon, the topic of affordable housing came up. I asked the interviewer what was affordable these days, expecting Kent, Auburn, or maybe even Buckley. His answer was Puyallup.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#82

Post by plandis » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

tcoppi wrote: post #62

perspectivep wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you're making $60k with $40k in expenses. Saving $20k. You move and now make $120k and your expenses double to $80k. You're saving $40k; twice as much. But in reality, not all of your expenses increase that much, and the other benefits (bonuses, matching, raises, interest, etc.) are % based, so the discrepancy increases quickly.

Taxes are also percentage based, and progressive at that. Your effective tax rate at $120k is quite a bit higher than at $60k, so you won't be saving double in that scenario because more of it will be going to taxes. Also, the percentage increase of 401k contributions etc. is very easy to calculate out to a dollar value, I recommend everyone do that when comparing salaries(though you have to remember not to consider…

It's funny you mention taxes. WAs no income tax is an added bonus. I also came from the Midwest and it was a nice perk.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#83

Post by Phlarp » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

Hearing that the recruiter more or less committed to a 170K+ range, only to waste significant amounts of interviewee time before rendering a below market offer is really concerning.

Amazon is in direct competition for talent with Google, Facebook and Microsoft and from what information I can gather they all pay significantly more while also lacking the bad reputation Amazon has accrued over the years for being a complete meat-grinder. (whether or not the others are actually meat-grinders is still up for debate: but they don't have a public reputation for being such)

Why does talent in our industry continue to accept this kind of treatment? If name brand law firms tried to pull this shit with associate lawyers I suspect they would get sent invoices for the billable hours.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#84

Post by majormajor » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:26 PM UTC

tcoppi wrote: post #62

perspectivep wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you're making $60k with $40k in expenses. Saving $20k. You move and now make $120k and your expenses double to $80k. You're saving $40k; twice as much. But in reality, not all of your expenses increase that much, and the other benefits (bonuses, matching, raises, interest, etc.) are % based, so the discrepancy increases quickly.

Taxes are also percentage based, and progressive at that. Your effective tax rate at $120k is quite a bit higher than at $60k, so you won't be saving double in that scenario because more of it will be going to taxes. Also, the percentage increase of 401k contributions etc. is very easy to calculate out to a dollar value, I recommend everyone do that when comparing salaries(though you have to remember not to consider…

I can tell you personally that going TX -> CA 60k->120k I was able to save way more money (in the five figures a year range) despite taxes and despite housing costs in a way that the naive "online cost of living calculators" wouldn't tell you about.

Yes, the square footage of my apartment went way down. Pretty much everyone out here lives in less space, generally it's less a "standard of living" thing than a "that's the norm" thing, but obviously if you really need 2K sqft you're going to want to evaluate things separately.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#85

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:27 PM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #46

I'm gonna ignore the fact that this is for Amazon, which has its own criticism. Anybody who is baffled by the author's insistence on $170-200k but the offer of low 6 figures needs to read up on negotiation. I recommend the various videos/books/posts by Ramit Sethi that are specific to salary negotiation. If you give the number first, you lose. They will only negotiate downward from there. You can deflect in a million…

[deleted]

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#86

Post by plandis » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:29 PM UTC

johnwheeler wrote: post #44

dominotw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but programmer has to know what ds/algorithm to choose, of course you can look up complexities and stuff but it doesn't help in cases where performance tuning of caches ect is necessary. you have to understand what that particular algorithm/ds is actually doing to tune it properly.

Your example of performance tuning caches is a perfect. It's enough to generally know about caches. Databases have query caches. Memcache and Redis are memory caches. Retrieval is O(1) because they're based on hashes. You can influence object expiration and turn on LRU. I can't implement a cache with LRU by the seat of my pants though, but I'm experienced enough to know you shouldn't do that anyways. And, I know enou…

I've always considered an LRU cache question to be pretty decent. The general idea is fairly obvious (linked list + hash table) and straightforward to get something working and is a good indicator on how someone can synthesize data structures to fit the needs of the problem.

Plus there is a lot of open endedness that makes it easy to drill down into someone's thought process.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#87

Post by linkregister » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:29 PM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #46

I'm gonna ignore the fact that this is for Amazon, which has its own criticism. Anybody who is baffled by the author's insistence on $170-200k but the offer of low 6 figures needs to read up on negotiation. I recommend the various videos/books/posts by Ramit Sethi that are specific to salary negotiation. If you give the number first, you lose. They will only negotiate downward from there. You can deflect in a million…

I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with this as a steadfast maxim. I think overall your statement fits maybe even 75% of negotiations but many do not fit this mold.

Overall, your BATNA (and your counterparty's) is the most important factor in the negotiation. Numbers can certainly go up, especially with changes in your BATNA. Case in point: "I've just received a higher offer; I would accept yours if you could match it + $10k." People post articles on HN all the time talking about how they get companies to outbid each other.

More important than "never giving the number first" is being steadfast in what you want (within realistic bounds). I have followed both styles but haven't been penalized by starting with the number first. If you're the best candidate, the company will pay what you insist on. Otherwise, the "never giving the number first" was never going to work to begin with.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#88

Post by plandis » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

aianus wrote: post #66

deanCommie wrote: post #58

I'd rather be homeless and broke in Seattle than living in a mansion in OKC.

I'd rather be homeless and broke in a sunny third world country than ever visit Seattle again. So what?

I'm curious why is Seattle so bad you'd give up the relative safety to live in a third world country?

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#89

Post by outworlder » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

A whole day dedicated to onsite interviews, plus traveling time. How do employed people manage that?

I understand that, from the company's point of view, 1 day is still to short to assess someone. But it is still a lot of time dedicated to an offer that may or may not materialize.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#90

Post by jc4p » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

wernercd wrote: post #71

jc4p wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have just under ten years of experience and lead teams of developers, Amazon routinely spams me asking me to do 120 min online coding tasks before even a phone screen too. It's just fucking disrespectful of my time, to be honest.

I'm at a new job where the "old team" of two developers is being replaced by 5 devs... the old team had ~15 years of experience and can't code their way out of a wet paper bag. Not saying anything about YOU... experience is important... but 15 years experience doesn't mean 15 years of good experience or lack of bad habits.

Yeah, definitely agreed. I just wanted to point out the person's "I opened the door to Amazon as a new dev" isn't purely limited to new devs perspectives.